Parliament in just weeks threatens to worsen ethnic tensions and instability and to drive an important part of President Hamid Karzai's political base into the arms of the insurgency, Afghans and foreign officials warn. Insecurity, disaffection and fraud, particularly in the south, left the country's largest and most important ethnic group, the Pashtuns, with sharply reduced representation, and the disputed results have pushed the country to the brink of a constitutional crisis. Meanwhile, a roadside bomb blew up next to a minibus in the Lashkar Gah-Sangin district in Helmand province on the main road running from the city of Kandahar to Herat, killing at least 14 civilians, officials said. A spokesman for the Helmand governor's office said four were wounded in the blast and the dead included women and children. President Hamid Karzai condemned the bombing as a "bloodthirsty" attack, saying the explosive was "planted by the enemy of the Afghan people." NATO described the incident as a "despicable attack" aimed at civilians. Casualties in 2010 With 711 Operation Enduring Freedom and International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) deaths, 2010 has been the deadliest year for foreign military troops since the U.S. invasion in 2001, continuing the trend that has occurred every year since 2003. In 2010, improvised explosive device (IED) attacks in Afghanistan wounded 3,366 U.S. soldiers, which is nearly 60% of the total IED-wounded since the start of the war. Of the 711 foreign soldiers killed in 2010, 630 were killed in action. 368 of those were killed by IEDs, which is around 36% of the total IED-killed since the start of the war to date. The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) recorded 1,271 Afghan civilian deaths in the American-led war in the first half of 2010. It attributed 920 Afghan civilian deaths as having been caused by anti-government elements in the first half of 2010, representing 72% of the total for that period, and 223 Afghan civilian deaths as having been caused by international-led military forces in the first half of 2010, representing 18% of the total for that period. In 128 (10%) of the deaths, UNAMA was unable to clearly attribute the cause to any one side. References Timelines of the War in Afghanistan (2001–2021) Years of the 21st century in Afghanistan Afghanistan Afghanistan 2010s in Afghanistan